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The Recording Industry
During and after the Great Migration, blues music underwent major stylistic and cultural changes, and one of the primary factors that propelled the blues’ rapid evolution was the commercial recording industry. Not only did the recording industry serve to propagate and popularize blues music, it also forced recording artists to conform to musical standards that were very different from those of the traditional blues (while also pioneering new musical techniques), and it imposed a capitalistic dimension upon the blues as well. In post-WWII America, a huge number of blues recordings were pressed, and the blues grew substantially in popularity as records were distributed on labels like Chess and Okeh as well as larger labels like Columbia and Victor.1 Unlike the vernacular, shared songs of the early southern blues, recorded songs were perceived as definitive versions (especially those that “hit,” or achieved massive popularity), and new generations of blues musicians learned hits as their musical foundations, rather than learning from their elders and superiors as the Delta bluesmen had.2 The blues style that was preserved on post-war records and learned by upcoming blues musicians was very different from the traditional blues that had originated in the Delta. The recording industry, and in particular the predominantly white record producers, imposed major stylistic limitations on the music, with a capitalistic focus on appealing to a broad audience and selling records en masse rather than on preserving musical traditions. Producers borrowed stylistic elements from the popular Tin Pan Alley styles, as well as swing and jazz (not unlike the producers of "Classic" blues decades earlier). In many cases, black musicians felt that white producers stripped their music of its “soul,” but the standardized, easily recognizable style that resulted nonetheless came to embody the urban blues styles.3 On the other hand, the post-war recording industry, in particular the Chess label, pioneered a variety of innovative recording techniques and effects that would become integral to blues music. Some of these techniques reflected and extended early blues conventions and even, in some cases, the African styles that underpin the Delta blues. For instance, the use of distortion and high-gain recording levels reflects the African tendency to create “dirty” sounds by attaching rattles or noisemakers to otherwise “clean-sounding” instruments; distortion, of course, would become an integral part of rock music and a variety of other styles (like funk, punk, and heavy metal).4 Finally, as these records reached across the Atlantic, they piqued the curiosity of a young generation of British musicians, including Eric Clapton and members of what would become the Rolling Stones, who, through the post-war recordings, became obsessed with the blues’ earliest roots.5 These British musicians were instrumental in the blues revival of the ‘60s and ‘70s; the post-war recording industry that allowed them to acquire blues pressings was thus a critical factor in the development of contemporary blues and blues-derived styles. ---- Bibliography 1 Palmer, Deep Blues, 107-9. 2 Spencer, “Diminishing Rural Residue,” 27-8. 3 Ibid., 36. 4 Palmer, Deep Blues, 30. 5 Wald, “The Blues Cult,” chap. 13 in Escaping the Delta, 220-49. Category:The Great Migration and Chicago Blues